


Hunky Dory

by inabathrobe



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Future Fic, Gen, Phone Calls & Telephones
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-06
Updated: 2011-08-06
Packaged: 2017-12-14 19:57:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,101
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/840768
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inabathrobe/pseuds/inabathrobe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Magneto gets a call from an old friend late one night.  (Or, David Bowie ex machina.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hunky Dory

**Author's Note:**

> [Originally posted to one of the kink memes.](http://1stclass-kink.livejournal.com/7315.html?thread=13225107)

When the phone rings, he knows that he has to answer it. Later, that will seem odd because they get so few phone calls and he so rarely bothers to answer it himself. In the moment, he has the utmost conviction that he _must answer that phone_ , and really, that should have been the tipoff.

"Hello?"

"Erik!" says the only person in the world who calls Magneto at half past midnight and expects him to answer. He says it with the sort of alacrity that makes Magneto want to bend something in half. (He settles for the spoon that is still sitting in his coffee.) 

"Professor."

"You're not pleased to hear from me."

Magneto opens his mouth to say something, but he can hear the pout through the phone line, he really can, and so he knows there is no hope. "No, of course, I'm pleased to hear from you," he says sweetly and turns back to the chess puzzle from yesterday's newspaper.

"Well, all right, if you're sure."

"Stop sulking," Magneto says, but no, it's Erik because Magneto doesn’t indulge the good professor and Professor X doesn't ring up Magneto for late night chats. (Not that they would ever do this on a semi-regular basis.) "Ask me how your sister is."

"How is Raven?"

"Mystique is very well. Very _blue_." His eyes flick up, and she is watching him from across the room, her attention caught by hearing her name. Something flickers across her face, irritation or maybe actual anger. She hates that he takes the calls, that he entertains Charles's whims, that he doesn't hate Charles, not really. She needs him to hate Charles because she can't. "She misses you. Do you want to talk to her?"

"No, I don't think that's wise."

Magneto tapped the pencil on the newsprint, staccato and nervous. "Neither was calling me."

"You're being horrible on purpose." Magneto switches the hand he is holding the phone with to tick in a note on his chess puzzle. He grins a little wildly and sips at his coffee. "You're not paying the slightest modicum of attention, are you?"

"No, not particularly," he says. "Go on. Tell me how Alex and Sean and Hank are."

"Well—" And Charles launches into some speech about Alex's boyfriend (which Erik makes a point not to comment on) and Sean having a hard time with his powers lately and some nonsense about Hank and shedding. It is only because Magneto has honed his ability to steadfastly ignore Professor X that he absorbs absolutely none of it.

The nudge to listen to Charles, goddammit, is like a nine-year-old trying to push him into the pool.

"I felt that," Magneto says with a calm he doesn't really feel. "What do you want, Charles? You didn't actually call me at this hour to talk about your pupils."

"Alex introduced me to this pop star whose music I must admit is superb—"

"Despite lacking several hundred years of theory behind it? You're losing your touch."

"Yes, well, in my old age, I've gone soft."

"You're thirty-seven," Magneto barks, writing down a note with such pressure that his pencil lead breaks.

Charles huffs. "As I said—"

"Get to the point."

"I'm sorry."

Now, Magneto is listening. "You're what?"

"Erik, I am so, so sorry for what I did to you. To us. I have realized that I made a horrendous error all those years ago, and I was wondering—" He hears Charles swallow. "I was _hoping_ —"

Magneto interrupts his emotional spew. "So what you are trying to tell me is that, yes, modern music does, in fact, have subliminal messaging. Have you tried playing this record backward?"

"Don't be ridiculous. Look, let me play it for you." Magneto hears the sound of the wheelchair rolling across the carpet, subtle and quiet but still there. He looks away from his puzzle as though he needs to avoid Charles's gaze. There is the quiet thunk of Charles setting the phone down. Then, the music stops for a moment, and Charles sets the earpiece down to move the needle, and Magneto knows that he could take that moment as an out. Charles has given it to him: he can run.

He doesn't. He leaves that to Professor X these days.

"Still there?"

"Of course," Magneto says gruffly, but no, it isn't a given. Nothing is anymore, apparently.

"All right. Just sit there and listen. _Really_ listen. —Do you know, I have a new pupil at the school who can hear—"

"Charles."

"Ah, yes, the Bowie album. As I said, I think you'll like this song because of its smooth tonal quality and the deconstruction of— Look. It's thematic." And then there is music playing in Magneto's ear, buzzing and distorted over their connection. He listens halfheartedly and works on his chess puzzle, determined not to concern himself with Charles's newfound appreciation of pop music, no matter how _thematic_ Bowie may or may not be.

And then Charles is crooning along with the record, singing into Magneto's ear, and really, that is embarrassing, and Magneto should tell him so, and he should stop it.

" _Homo sapiens_ have outgrown their use," Charles whispers, his voice low and throaty and rough, and Magneto is just going to kill him this time, kill him dead, because "Look at your children,/See their faces in golden rays" in Charles's damned schoolboy accent, and when was the last time that Magneto saw them when they weren't trying to kill one another?

When the song ends, Charles says, "Well?"

Erik huffs. "Did you really ring me up to try to make amends for nine years of mistaken policy through a song?"

Charles hesitates. "Among other things."

Erik coughs. "Charles, do you—" He falters. He doesn't do this often enough (or, to be frank, at all).

"Go on," Charles says breathlessly.

"Do you want to go for a coffee sometime?"

"Yes," Charles says. "I'd like that."

They bicker through setting a date (Charles teaches most days) and time (Erik likes to sleep at normal hours, thank you) and place (which of them is in a wheelchair?), but they settle on a coffee shop in Westchester on Wednesday evening. Charles promises that his students are unlikely to find it and that there are chess tables. Erik agrees without much protest.

"I'll be in touch," Charles says, and then he rings off. Magneto is left with a dead receiver, a half-finished chess puzzle, and Mystique watching him bemusedly over her novel from across the room.

"What?" he snarls.

She laughs at him. "Tell Charles that I send my love."


End file.
